Those of you who were hoping the Apple Watch would usher in a new era of flatulence apps, prepare to be disappointed: Apple has already rejected the first app that serves no purpose other than to allow people to make fart sounds from their wrist.

The looks are just the beginning. It’s loaded with cutting-edge technology. The tiny Retina display has a new form of pressure sensitivity Apple calls Force Touch, which responds not only to where you touch the screen, but how hard you press. The watch notifies you with extremely nuanced vibrations via its Taptic Engine, which can produce strikingly realistic sensations, almost like a bell tapping on your wrist. Perhaps most important, the watch’s “digital crown” helps you navigate long menus, set options, and zoom in and out of maps and photos. And all the speedy software and motion tracking is controlled by the company’s new S1 processor, which packs in multiple components on a single chip. It’s an impressive package. After using it, I had no question that the Apple Watch is the most advanced piece of wearable technology you can buy today.

On the Apple Watch, swipe up on the watch face to access Glances. Swipe from left to right or right to left to the Battery glance. It gives you information about how much battery is remaining, and an option to use Power Reserve mode to stretch available power.

The all-new site dedicated to Apple Watch bands has each of the bands in their own section, meaning the Milanese Loop, for instance, is no longer listed in two different areas. instead, visitors can pick either the 38mm or 42mm right from the single listing. Separate colors are also easily selectable now, as shown for the Sport band in the image above.

And now we’ve got artist Beyoncé showing off a customized Apple Watch Edition, which also boasts a gold Link Bracelet. This is the same design, with all gold, as the Apple Watch that was delivered to the aforementioned Lagerfeld, so it looks like Apple is more than happy to make the gold-based smartwatch for those that can buy that sort of thing.

It had a great run, but Google has today discontinued the 2013-edition Nexus 7. The device was arguably—and is still to this this day—one of the best options when it comes to mid-range Android tablets. You may not be able to grab it on the Google Store anymore, but several places are offering the device at decent prices. On eBay, you can find several options including one that’s $185 refurbished .

Each week, a new round of apps and app updates land in the iOS App Store. This week is no exception with the debut of Rally Racer Drift and a major update to Sortly – Moving Organization & Inventory . These titles are only a sampling of what is available. Read on for our weekly picks of the best new apps and app updates that you shouldn’t miss.

It would seem Apple Watch’s heart rate monitor is much more intelligent than Apple is letting on. Not only can it read your pulse, but it’s also capable of measuring blood oxygen — a feature Apple could enable in a future Watch update.

Phone calls may have fallen out of fashion, but Americans still make 1 billion of them every day. And yet the experience of making a call isn’t all that great: phones don’t always recognize numbers, contacts can be difficult to manage, and they rarely take advantage of newer technologies like Wi-Fi calling. Now Facebook is introducing an app designed to fix that: Hello, an Android-only dialer app that seeks to modernize phone calls while also working to put Facebook at the center of all your communications. Among other features, it lets you more easily make free calls over Wi-Fi.

While Maigret couldn't go into detail on their relationship and how it started, Sphero began working with Lucasfilm on the next Star Wars movie late last year, not long after the conclusion of the Disney accelerator program.

This week we were lucky enough to have King Gothalion join Destin Legarie and Fran Mirabella to talk about the huge Reef reveal from Bungie for the House of Wolves. How excited are they? Listen or watch to find out.

Americans receiving their Apple Watch on Friday are being emailed an invitation to schedule an online Personal Setup session, guiding them through setting up and using the device without having to visit an Apple Store.

This isn't the first radical new look for the crown prince of crime, who was created by Jerry Robinson, Bill Finger and Bob Kane for his first appearance in Batman #1 on 25 April 1940. In recent comics, the Joker's bleached-white visage was horrifyingly removed, while Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight Returns" took a more realistic route with actor Heath Ledger delivering a chilling turn under grimy white make-up and a layer of mysterious scars.

Of course, LinX technology has not been evaluated independently in a functioning smartphone, to the best of my knowledge. We have to rely on the company's claims and on the evidence it controls. But what LinX does claim on the image-quality front is that its cameras can match DSLR cameras, but in a tiny smartphone-compatible size -- in fact, LinX systems are smaller than existing smartphone camera electronics and, more specifically and more importantly, they weigh about half as much.

Out of this 3 million, the Apple Watch Sport will be the most popular one among consumers and is estimated to sell around 1.8 million units. It will be followed by the Apple Watch Steel with 1.2 million units and the Apple Watch Edition with 40,000 units. In total, Howe expects Apple Watch will bring in an estimated $2 billion in revenue for Apple with gross margins of over 60% — making it one of the most profile products of the Cupertino company ever.

The Apple Watch made its debut on wrists around the world today — and people are unboxing and poking at it as we speak. Several of us here at TechCrunch have been doing the same with ours, and we’ll be documenting that over the next week or so. In order to give you a more holistic picture of what …

“In Google, there are some second thoughts on how to interpret version 3 [of the eyewear],” Vian told his company’s shareholders at the company’s general meeting in Milan. “What you saw was version 1. We’re now working on version 2, which is in preparation.”

"Public shaming as a blood sport has to stop," says Monica Lewinsky. In 1998, she says, “I was Patient Zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.” Today, the kind of online public shaming she went through has become constant — and can turn deadly. In a brave talk, she takes a hard look at our online culture of humiliation, and asks for a different way.

Rob Knight is a pioneer in studying human microbes, the community of tiny single-cell organisms living inside our bodies that have a huge — and largely unexplored — role in our health. “The three pounds of microbes that you carry around with you might be more important than every single gene you carry around in your genome,” he says. Find out why.

Carol Dweck researches “growth mindset” — the idea that we can grow our brain's capacity to learn and to solve problems. In this talk, she describes two ways to think about a problem that’s slightly too hard for you to solve. Are you not smart enough to solve it … or have you just not solved it yet? A great introduction to this influential field.

Analysts, reporters and big thinkers love to talk about Gross Domestic Product. Put simply, GDP, which tallies the value of all the goods and services produced by a country each year, has become the yardstick by which we measure a country’s success. But there’s a big, elephant-like problem with that: GDP only accounts for a country’s economic performance, not the happiness or well-being of its citizens. With GDP, if your richest 100 people get richer, your GDP rises … but most of your citizens are just as badly off as they were before.

The place that travel writer Pico Iyer would most like to go? Nowhere. In a counterintuitive and lyrical meditation, Iyer takes a look at the incredible insight that comes with taking time for stillness. In our world of constant movement and distraction, he teases out strategies we all can use to take back a few minutes out of every day, or a few days out of every season. It’s the talk for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the demands for our world.

Charlottesville is home to the University of Virginia, which itself has a long history of helping shape generations of thinkers and leaders. Ting Internet, with Blue Ridge InternetWorks, is excited to help in the quest to power the next generation.

Dame Stephanie Shirley is the most successful tech entrepreneur you never heard of. In the 1960s, she founded a pioneering all-woman software company in the UK, which was ultimately valued at $3 billion, making millionaires of 70 of her team members. In this frank and often hilarious talk, she explains why she went by “Steve,” how she upended the expectations of the time, and shares some sure-fire ways to identify ambitious women …

Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat explores the paradox of being an artist in exile: a voice for her people, but unable to go home. In her work, she explores Iran pre- and post-Islamic Revolution, tracing political and societal change through powerful images of women.

A word of warning: this post may make you want to weep. Last week I blogged about tiny pieces of parchment, paper birch bark, and wood that were filled with short messages from individuals in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (check out Texting in Medieval Times ). The snippets – from a soldier’s request for more beer to a duke’s shopping list – were made cheaply and with little care because the messages on them were not meant to be kept long. Although such ephemeral material doesn’t normally survive, it forms an important historical source: it provides a rare glimpse on everyday life in medieval times.

Matt Murdock — better known as crime-fighter Daredevil — is finding his way back to the small screen. Netflix has announced that the Marvel hero will return in a second season of Daredevil , due to hit the streaming service at an unspecified point in 2016. No plot details have been announced yet, but it looks likely that Murdock will widen his net, dealing with other villains from the comic company's vast stable.

But a royal tomb cold also hold the remains of a lord, which may fit with a competing idea about the city. Linda Manzanilla, a Mexican archaeologist acclaimed by many of her peers, contends that the city was governed by four co-rulers and notes that the city lacks a palace or apparent depiction of kings on its many murals. The excavation by Gomez my find one of those co-rulers, under this hypothesis.

Meet the “motion microscope,” a video-processing tool that plays up tiny changes in motion and color impossible to see with the naked eye. Video researcher Michael Rubinstein plays us clip after jaw-dropping clip showing how this tech can track an individual’s pulse and heartbeat simply from a piece of footage. Watch him re-create a conversation by amplifying the movements from sound waves bouncing off a bag of chips. The wow-inspiring and sinister applications of this tech you have to see to believe.

Unlike the instant film the Fujifilm Instax uses, there is no waiting for the Zip's prints to develop and the prints are less expensive; a pack of 100 sheets of Zink paper runs about $25 (£15, AU$65). The paper is the only consumable, so you don't have to worry about ink cartridges, and the prints come out dry and smudge-proof because there's no ink involved.

In this thoughtful talk, David Puttnam asks a big question about the media: Does it have a moral imperative to create informed citizens, to support democracy? His solution for ensuring media responsibility is bold, and you might not agree. But it's certainly a question worth asking ... (Filmed at TEDxHousesofParliament.)

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In this fun, short talk from TEDYouth, lexicographer Erin McKean encourages — nay, cheerleads — her audience to create new words when the existing ones won’t quite do. She lists out 6 ways to make new words in English, from compounding to “verbing,” in order to make language better at expressing what we mean, and to create more ways for us to understand one another.

What exactly is Tesla showing off at its event next week? The company's already let most of the cat out of the bag on that already, but decided to go full feline today, telling investors that it would be showing off a pair of new battery technologies. A note from the company's VP of investor relations, which was obtained by BuzzFeed , says Tesla "will introduce the Tesla home battery and a very large utility scale battery," adding that "we will explain the advantages of our solutions and why past battery options were not compelling."

You may think that Starbucks does coffee every conceivable way, with its endless flavor combinations, milk options, and Italian-sounding cup sizes. But from Senegal to Cyprus, coffee gets infinitely more creative. "Around the World in 31 Coffees," an infographic by British airline search engine CheapFlights , tempts you to travel based on the myriad ways to drink your dose of daily caffeine. In Austria, for example, they drink Wiener Melange, which involves espresso, egg yolk, brown sugar, and whipped cream. In Vietnam, there's Ca Phe Da, which layers ground coffee, condensed milk, boiling water, and ice in a tall glass. Starbucks may be more convenient than, say, Germany. But it's worth the flight to sip in style.

Alex Allmont's Play House gives new meaning to PLUR, subbing the "love" in Peace, Love, United, Respect for... LEGOs. Using LEGO Technic, the Chris Burden-meets-Phuture installation was made for AudioGraft 2014 (with a commission from Oxford Contemporary Music) and mechanically computes and emits "hooky and hypnotic acid house." We definitely agree with the hypnotic bit.

And we're not even talking about the third-party Facebook apps or browser add-ons , we're talking about all the official, baked-in, easily accessible functions that are just a few clicks away. As you'll see in our slideshow, there are even some functions that appear to be leftovers from bygone eras that we're not even sure Facebook still knows are there.

But being safer online isn't as hard as you might think. Here are a few simple ways to keep your personal information to yourself without putting in too much effort. It shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to improve your Internet privacy, and the peace of mind is invaluable.

Sheryl Sandberg admits she was terrified to step onto the TED stage in 2010 — because she was going to talk, for the first time, about the lonely experience of being a woman in the top tiers of business. Millions of views (and a best-selling book) later, the Facebook COO talks with the woman who pushed her to give that first talk, Pat Mitchell. Sandberg opens up about the reaction to her idea, and explores the ways that women still struggle with success.

This debut issue used Hulk as a means of bringing the Avengers together for the first time. After Loki manipulated events to make Hulk the scapegoat for a near-disastrous train accident, Giant-Man, Wasp, Thor and Iron Man all united in the manhunt for Hulk. The first time the Armored Avenger clashed with the Jade Giant, Hulk tricked Stark into flying past him and then crippled his armor's power supply (this being at a time when the Iron Man armor was still in its crudest form and Hulk wasn't dumb so much as thuggish and crafty). The second time, Iron Man used his strength to intercept a flying pipe and reshape it into a large grappling hook to subdue Hulk.

That facility—The Leonard Florence Center for Living—opened in 2010, and since then Berman has remained devoted to his work of reimagining what life can be for the elderly in America. He’s now embarking on what may be his most ambitious project yet—an effort to transform the nursing home where he'd first put his mother into a place that looks more like the Leonard Florence Center. It may not work. Nursing homes have been run the same way for decades, in part to meet government regulations and to qualify for government payments such as Medicare and Medicaid. And it's harder to turn an existing place around than it is to build a better one from scratch. But Berman thinks that if he can do this, he can help change the entire nursing-home industry.